A Republican ad attacking Democratic Sen. Mark Pryor of Arkansas says he “voted to give Social Security benefits to illegal immigrants.” Actually, what Pryor voted for wouldn’t have paid a penny to any immigrant while here illegally.
In discussing his decision to send the National Guard to the Mexico border, Texas Gov. Rick Perry repeatedly has misused data on “criminal aliens” arrested in Texas.
Q: Did the Obama administration advertise in January to transport 65,000 foreign children apprehended at the border? Did it expect a surge of illegal immigration?
A: Yes. There’s been a sharp increase in unaccompanied children from Central America since FY 2012, and the U.S. projected a bigger increase this year.
A TV ad falsely claims Tennessee Sen. Lamar Alexander is “responsible” for a surge of “illegal aliens” who are “overrunning our border” because he voted for “amnesty.”
Sen. Ted Cruz says there will be “20 or 30 million” people living in the U.S. illegally “in another 10, 20 years” if the Senate immigration bill becomes law. But the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office says the bill, if enacted, will reduce future illegal immigration by 33 percent to 50 percent compared with current law.
Before we got a chance to write about it, Newt Gingrich yanked a Spanish-language radio ad off the airwaves in Florida. The reason: No, it wasn’t a stellar fact-checking by journalists. Rather, it was Republican Sen. Marco Rubio’s complaint that the ad’s criticism of Mitt Romney was “inaccurate, inflammatory, and doesn’t belong in this campaign.”
Gingrich’s ad had called Romney “the most anti-immigrant candidate,” a claim to which Rubio strenuously objected. He told the Miami Herald: “The truth is that neither of these two men is anti-immigrant.
The remaining Republican presidential candidates meet Jan. 7 for a prime-time ABC News/Yahoo!/WMUR-TV debate at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire. Less than 12 hours later, they meet again for an NBC News/Facebook debate on “Meet the Press.”
Here are some possible lines of attack to expect, based on what the candidates, their campaigns and their surrogates have been saying lately.
‘Timid vs. Bold’
A major storyline heading into New Hampshire has been former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s stepped-up attacks on former Massachusetts Gov.
Summary
A pro-Romney group is savaging Newt Gingrich with TV ads and mailers to Iowa Republicans. Gingrich dismisses the attacks as “lies.” We find that some of the claims from Restore Our Future are indeed distorted, false or misleading. But several are also right on target.
A TV spot makes a distorted claim that Gingrich co-sponsored a bill containing money for a United Nations program “supporting China’s brutal one-child policy.” The truth is that bill specifically prohibited the use of funds for “involuntary sterilization or abortion,” or “the coercion of any person to accept family planning services.” The funding in question was a small part of a much larger bill which died before ever coming up for a vote.
The GOP candidates took some liberties when discussing jobs, Social Security, immigration, health care and other issues during the presidential debate at the Ronald Reagan Library: Perry exaggerated when he called Social Security a “Ponzi scheme” that won’t …
In the Nevada Senate race, the state’s economy — it has the highest unemployment in the country — has prompted two new ads that deal with illegal immigration. Republican challenger Sharron Angle falsely claims Sen. Harry Reid voted to …